3.  “Having had little to do this morning,” said Mrs. Timorous to Mrs. Light-mind, “I went to give Christiana a visit.”  “Law,” I read in his most impressive Life, “by this time was well turned fifty, but he rose as early and was as soon at his desk as when he was still a new, enthusiastic, and scrupulously methodical student at Cambridge.”  Summer and winter Law rose to his devotions and his studies at five o’clock, not because he had imperative sermons to prepare, but because, in his own words, it is more reasonable to suppose a person up early because he is a Christian than because he is a labourer or a tradesman or a servant.  I have a great deal of business to do, he would say.  I have a hardened heart to change; I have still the whole spirit of religion to get.  When Law at any time felt a temptation to relax his rule of early devotion, he again reminded himself how fast he was becoming an old man, and how far back his sanctification still was, till he flung himself out of bed and began to make himself a new heart before the servants had lighted their fires or the farmers had yoked their horses.  Shame on you, he said to himself, to lie folded up in a bed when you might be pouring out your heart in prayer and in praise, and thus be preparing yourself for a place among those blessed beings who rest not day and night saying, Holy, Holy, Holy.  “I have little to do this morning,” said Mrs. Timorous.  “But I am preparing for a journey,” said Christiana.  “I have now a price put into my hand to get gain, and I should be a fool of the greatest size if I should have no heart to strike in with the opportunity.”

4.  Another thing that completely threw out Christiana’s idle visitor and made her downright angry was the way she would finger and kiss and read pieces out of the fragrant letter she held in her hand.  You will remember how Christiana came by that letter she was now so fond of.  “Here,” said Secret, “is a letter I have brought thee from thy husband’s King.”  So she took it and opened it, and it smelt after the manner of the best perfume; also it was written in letters of gold.  “I advise thee,” said Secret, “that thou put this letter in thy bosom, that thou read therein to thy children until you have all got it by root-of-heart.”  “His messenger was here,” said Christiana to Mrs. Timorous, “and has brought me a letter which invites me to come.”  And with that she plucked out the letter and read to her out of it, and said:  “What now do you say to all that?” That, again, is so true to our own life.  For there is nothing that more distastes and disrelishes many people among us than just that we should name to them our favourite books, and read a passage out of them, and ask them to say what they think of such wonderful words.  Samuel Rutherford’s Letters, for instance; a book that smells to some nostrils with the same heavenly perfume as Secret’s own letter did.  A book, moreover, that is written in the same ink of gold.  Ask at afternoon tea